Incredible Shrinking Man

Edit Locked

Advertisement:

Bees and moths whirr above you like helicopters. Flowers and blades of grass loom over you. Familiar household objects are like huge, immovable obstacles. Your fellow human beings blot out the sky with their immense, towering girth. Sound like a bad case of the Mondays? Think again: you've been shrunk!

The plots of Shrinking Man stories tend to involve hapless victims of Applied Phlebotinum suddenly becoming one finger tall (Magic Pants included), struggling to navigate a formerly friendly environment (such as a house or yard) and spending the rest of the episode trying not to get killed or eaten while attracting the notice of normal-sized folks who might be able to change them back to normal. (Don't expect the message to get acrossimmediately.)

Advertisement:

Examples:

Happens only in the manga version of Busou Renkin, when Tokiko is hit multiple times by Madoka's Bubble Cage.

Happens in the Cardcaptor Sakura TV episode where Sakura is shrunk by the Little card.

Dr. Slump: The "Big-Small Ray Gun" is one of Senbei's inventions that can make any object big or small. It reappears several times later, like in a "Fantastic Voyage" Plot where Midori was ill because of a mosquito in her body. Senbei and Arale use the invention to shrink down to very small sizes in order to enter Midori´s body and get rid of the mosquito.

Doraemon has various gadget with this effect like the "Small Light", a lamp similar to a flashlight that can shrink objects and people to minuscule sizes. Another tool that is used in a similar capacity is the "Gulliver Tunnel", which causes a person to grow or shrink depending on which entrance he takes; however, its ratio of shrinking and enlarging is fixed.

In one episode of the original Dragon Ball, Bulma develops an invention that can shrink anybody. Master Roshi decides to use it to watch Bulma go to the bathroom. He doesn't get to see her go, but he does get flushed down the toilet.

Happens in Ghost Sweeper Mikami, when the eponymous Action Girl is hit by a dart from a spirit and in few hours she's shrunk to the size of a Barbie doll. She and her assistants must find the culprit and exorcise him, lest she will keep shrinking and disappear.

Happens to Narancia in Part 5 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure when he's attacked by Formaggio, whose Stand: Little Feet, has the ability to shrink his victims by stabbing them with his dagger-like index finger, Formaggio can even turn the Stand on himself for narrow escaping!.

Happens in one episode in the anime adaptation of Kochikame when the main character Ryotsu was shrunk by the wizard from Heaven. He goes through mishaps in the police box and later helped taking out criminals holding up hostages.

The Atoms have this as their power; some plots involve them or other characters shrinking and then having the size controls taken away/break.

And of course, there was the appearance of Ray Palmer's Atom at the end of Identity Crisis, wherein he shrinks out of existence after finding out his ex-wife killed Sue Dibny.

In The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Batman rescues Ray from a deserted island in a strange universe full of monsters. Except that he's actually trapped in a Petri dish, fighting what would normally be micro-organisms.

Ray's also lampshaded some of the oddities of his powers. When questioned about how people can breathe when they're barely the size of a cell, he admits that he has no idea how and he just goes with it.

Bumblebee from the Teen Titans and Doom Patrol was accidentally reduced to the size of a small toy. Unlike most shrinking superheroes, she has yet to find a way to regain her original size.

An entire CITY (Kandor) was shrunk to microscopic size so as to preserve it when Krypton exploded. Superman kept it in what appeared to be a five gallon water bottle. Whenever Superman and Supergirl wanted to go in there, they had to shrink their bodies.

In SupergirlVol 1 #2, Kara shrinks herself and one of her teachers to go in the Bottle City of Kandor and find a cure to her professor's illness.

In Krypton No More, Supergirl shrinks her body to meet up with the Kandorian council and hear about the J'ai invasion.

War World: Alien overlord Mongul kidnaps Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and another Superman's friend, shrinks them and traps them into a crystalline energy cube.

In fact, many comic book characters have shrinking (or size-changing in general) as their primary superpower (i.e. Ant-Man, The Wasp...)

This happens to Donald Duck, Scrooge and the nephews (along with Scrooge's whole money bin) in several different comic books by Carl Barks and Don Rosa. One of these was also "adapted" into a DuckTales (1987) episode, except that the episode had almost nothing to do with the story aside from the premise of the characters getting shrunk.

One quasi-educational story from the early '60s had Donald take his nephews (through an uncannily prescient virtual-reality device) on a trip through the mundane everyday world while shrunk increasingly smaller to encounter phenomena more fantastic than any make-believe reality the nephews could think of.

Happened to Bart, Milhouse and Homer in an early issue of The Simpsons comic book ("I Shrink, Therefore I'm Small").

Almost every incarnation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has a story of this type. The first cartoon (and subsequently, the Archie comic book based on it) did this during the "Eye of Sarnath" arc in an episode called "The Incredible Shrinking Turtles". The Mirage comic book has this as Donatello's current status quo (as of May 2009). The second cartoon had the episode "The Incredible Shrinking Serling", where time travel (don't ask) makes him the size of an action figure.

The Fantastic Four found themselves in a variant situation when they are captured by Doctor Doom and placed in a machine where their consciousnesses were transferred into miniature duplicates of themselves in a tiny simulation of a town called Liddleville. Eventually, they break out, manage to defeat Doom in their mini-versions and restore their consciousnesses to their real bodies.

In the Marvel Universe in general, anyone who shrinks below a certain limit (apparently somewhere between cellular size and molecular size) shifts into a "microverse" - the theory is that a shrinking person is actually displacing their mass extradimensionally, and when 99.99999999999999% is over there, the rest (and consciousness) follows. Among the notable inhabitants of microverses are Psycho Man, Jarella (a lover of the Incredible Hulk for a while), and the (now Exiled from Continuity) Micronauts.

Colossal Boy has this power in the 2004 relaunch of Legion of Super-Heroes. So why's he called Colossal Boy? Because he's from a race of giants, and has the power to "shrink" down to six feet tall. He insists on being called "Micro-Lad."

More traditionally, Legion regular Shrinking Violet, who comes from the planet of Imsk where everyone has shrinking powers.

Also from Imsk is her evil counterpart Micro Lad, part of a group of radicals that were responsible for kidnapping Violet and replacing her with Durlan actress Yera. In the Reboot continuity, there was another Imsk hero named Ion who was a candidate for Legion membership before Micro Lad killed her.

The graphic novel In the Small features this happening to every human on Earth due to a mysterious blue flash. Shrunken, terrorized by animals and unable to use most technology, they need to rebuild everything in miniature.

In the revived Xombi series from 2011, John Rozum introduced Nun the Less, a nun who gained shrinking abilities after she ingested bad shrimp when she was 16.

In Big Bang Comics, the Captain Ersatz equivalent of the Atom is the Hummingbird, who was shrunk by an alien ray that was destroyed before he could be re-enlarged. As such, he's stuck permanently at a maximum height of six inches, though among his powers is the ability to temporarily shrink even smaller.

The Wacky Adventures of Pedro has one storyline in which Ordep hatches a world domination scheme that involves shrinking everyone else in the world, including Pedro.

Calvin and Hobbes features several strips in which Calvin, usually with no explanation, finds himself either changed to the size of an insect, or acting out the role of a bug itself. Since these episodes, from what we can see, are entirely within his imagination, they usually end in an anticlimax when a parent interrupts his reverie.

Fan Works

In Huge Success,Tony decided to look at Dr. Pym's pym particles without permission and ended up being 6 inches tall.

Some form of shrinking happens in many of GirlX2's stories, often due to "Lilliputian Syndrome."

Actually, all of the humans in the chapter have been shrunk. The four manage to find a gun that will unshrink everyone.

In The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, one of the magic potions they take from some muggers turns out to be a shrinking potion. Paul, obliquely referring to his scene in Help!, jokes that he'll probably be the one who has to use it. Sure enough, later on, he does.

It should be pointed out that the Square-Cube Law may have been somewhat averted in this particular movie because Scott Carey very slowly shrinks, thus giving his body a chance to adapt to his changing size.

Both films were based on the novel by Richard Matheson, who also wrote I Am Legend and scripted the two Kolchak TV movies. Matheson also wrote an unfilmed sequel where Scott's wife shrinks and engages in an Action Girl quest to find him, then their adventures getting back to the house as they both start returning to normal.

As noted in Stephen King's Danse Macabre, Richard Matheson originally made the eponymous man shrink a constant rate of 1/7th of an inch per day rather than by a given proportion, resulting in the Fridge Logic of what happens when he gets to that height.

The Lily Tomlin vehicle The Incredible Shrinking Woman made her decreasing size, caused by exposure to too many household cleansers, food additives, and hygiene products, a parable about out-of-control consumerism.

The Marvel character Ant-Man gets his power from being the Incredible Shrinking Man, demonstrated to great effect in his eponymous film.

This was the basis for the plot of the live-action movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, along with its sequel, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves and the TV series that followed, also called Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

In The Beatles movie Help!, a character uses a special injection to shrink Ringo's finger in order to remove a sacrificial ring naming him an offering to a Hindi god, but misses and hits Paul in the leg, whereupon the scene cuts away to a card reading "The Exciting Adventures of Paul on the Floor".

In Dot And Keeto, Dot goes to eat the root that lets her talk to animals so she can apologize to some ants her brother was tormenting, but she accidentally eats the root next to it, which makes her shrink down to the size of a bug (and makes her able to talk to them). After trying to get the attention of her brother and mother, she goes on an adventure among the bugs until her friend Kangaroo shrinks down, too, and brings her some of the root that will make her the proper size again.

Fantastic Voyage, in which a submersible is shrunk to microscopic size to be injected into a comatose spy to laser away the clots that are killing him. This has been pointed out, more than once, leads to a stupid conclusion where the people abandon the ship and swim to safety, being extracted from the tear ducts before they return to normal size automatically. No mention is ever made of the sub growing to normal size and exploding the patient.

The Novelisation of Fantastic Voyage was written by Isaac Asimov, who insisted on writing in that the sub did get removed at the end specifically to avoid the whole sub expanding and killing the patient issue.

The Phantom Planet, where an astronaut lands on a tiny planetoid and, as soon as he breathes their air, shrinks to six inches tall (without his clothing). He later grows back to normal by breathing the air in his spacesuit tank. (This caused the Mystery Science Theater 3000 to riff ,"So people are just balloons?")

In Innerspace Tuck is shrunk down to microscopic size for an experimental fantastic voyage through the body of a rabbit, but winds up injected into Jack when all hell breaks loose at the lab.

Done for horror in The Devil-Doll, wherein the Anti-Hero protagonist takes advantage of a Mad Scientist's research by shrinking people to a height of eight inches, smuggling them into the homes of his enemies, and using them to take revenge.

The (semi) titular villain in Dr. Cyclops shrinks the protagonists down to doll size For Science! and terrorizes them, leading to a David vs. Goliath style climax wherein the tiny people drop "Dr. Cyclops" down into a uranium mine. They eventually return to normal size at the end.

The Uncanny: In "Quebec province, 1975", Lucy uses black magic to reduce her cousin Angela to the size of a mouse.

In Downsizing, people voluntarily undergo permanent shrinking as part of a plan to extend the Earth's resources - if we're smaller, we use less!

Literature

Happens twice in Animorphs. Once, a tiny (ant-sized, with inversely proportional egos) alien race called the Helmacrons shrinks some of the Animorphs. The second time, the Helmacrons enter Marco's body, so the Animorphs have to shrink themselves in order to enter Marco's body and stop the Helmacrons from killing Marco. Unfortunately, they anticipated this, and sabotage the ray so they're even smaller (Rachel morphs an elephant that's still smaller than a Helmacron boot).

The Incredible Adventures of Karik and Valya has two kids drinking some liquid and shrinking to insect size, then being whisked into nature by a dragonfly. Needless to say, the whole thing is very dangerous.

The British SF novel Cold War in a Country Garden.

Shrinking is one of the less bizarre experiences Alice has in Wonderland.

Used in one of the Danny Dunn children's scifi adventures.

Two books in the Eerie, Indiana series use this. The Incredible Shrinking Stanley, in which Stanley gets splashed with special soap from the Eerie laundry mat and starts shrinking, and The Dollhouse That Time Forgot where Marshall, after exploring a house that looks suspiciously like the dollhouse his sister just bought, finds himself getting smaller and smaller.

The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson, on which the movie The Incredible Shrinking Man was based (almost all modern editions of the novel even add the "Incredible" part to the book's title, as the movie is more famous).

The 1936 short story He Who Shrank takes this beyond all limits: a Mad Scientist injects his assistant with a serum that will make him shrink indefinitely. Said assistant shrinks to subatomic sizes, discovers that every atom is actually a solar system, lands on a planet, shrinks below the size of the atoms of that planet, and so on without end. It's a handy way of visiting innumerable planets without a spaceship.note It was mentioned early on that the serum also conveniently allow you to breathe in space.The end of the story has the protagonist visit our Earth.

The plot of the young adult book "The Sixty-Eight Rooms" by Marianne Malone. Complete with a fight with a cockroach.

In the Rainbow Magic series, when Rachel and Kirsty turn into fairies they shrink in size.

The two kids in Sixty Eight Rooms are shrunken to five inches. They are regular size when in the miniturized rooms and leave to enter into the past.

This is Mike Teavee's karmic comeuppance in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when he fools with the Television-Chocolate Room's setup so he can be "sent by television". After all, if an image one sees on TV is smaller than the actual object was...

People who visit future worlds via the mystical Solstice in James Blaylock's Land of Dreams emerge into a later era to find themselves much smaller relative to things around them. Human beings gradually "acclimate" and expand to an appropriate size for humans in the world they're visiting, but their clothes stay small; when Jack and Skeezix travel into future Rio Dell, they're forced to borrow some dolls' dresses or else go naked when they outgrow the garments they'd arrived in.

Evelyn Sibley Lampman's The City Under the Back Steps details the adventures of two children in an ant colony after they're shrunk to ant size.

The Golden Age science fiction novel The Girl In the Golden Atom involves a scientist and his friends who find a way to shrink and re-enlarge themselves, and discover a subatomic world inside one atom of a gold ring. Naturally, given the title, the hero meets a pretty girl there and they fall in love, while he and his buddies also help the locals overthrow a tyrannical regime.

Mexican comedic superhero El Chapulín Colorado had his Pastillas de Chiquitolina (Tinyline Pills), which he could take to shrink in size. It usually led to more grief for him, since before he takes them he's a mediocre hero and after he takes them he's a mediocre hero who's also tiny and helpless.

In one episode of The Greatest American Hero, Ralph gets another copy of the suit's manual from the original aliens - but shrinks himself while experimenting, gets scared by an ant, panics and goes back to normal size, leaving the manual shrunk... I guess they also gave him an Idiot Ball to go with the replacement manual.

In Doctor Who, a specific component of the TARDIS can change the size of things, and presumably relates to how a TARDIS can be bigger on the inside.

The early serial "Planet of Giants" featured the First Doctor and companions trying to stay alive in a typical suburban home after a TARDIS malfunction reduced them to the size of bugs.

In "The Time Meddler", the First Doctor permanently crippled the TARDIS of the Meddling Monk by removing the "dimensional control" so the other Time Lord couldn't get back into his (brand new, more advanced) TARDIS; afterwards, the console room was too small for him to fit inside.

In "The Invisible Enemy", the Fourth Doctor temporarily removed the "relative dimensional stabilizer" from his TARDIS to shrink clones of Leela and himself so they could be injected them into the doctor's brain to fight a virus (in an homage to Fantastic Voyage).

Later, another rogue Time Lord weaponized one in "The Armageddon Factor" (but wound up shrinking himself and the Doctor instead of the enemy).

The Master similarly uses a "Tissue Compression Eliminator" weapon which kills people by shrinking them, possibly the same technology but without the normally associated life support mechanisms allowing subjects to still breathe and such.

In "Planet of Fire", they meet a minaturised Master who had an accident while working on his TCE.

Some similar non-Gallifreyan technologies showed up occasionally.

In "Carnival of Monsters" the Third Doctor accidentally landed the TARDIS inside a "compression field", where the people on the outside were giants in comparison. Anything removed from the compression field returned to normal size within a few seconds. (The first thing so removed was the TARDIS, because it was interfering with the compression field. A giant hand reached in and picked it up.)

In "The Pirate Planet", the Fourth Doctor encountered a bad guy who kept the shrunken remains of planets he'd destroyed as trophies.

In "Last of the Time Lords" the Master transforms the Doctor to physically represent his current age (around 900), with the Doctor becoming a gnome-like 5 inch tall man. (This may not count because it's shrinking by old age, but it's still shrinking nonetheless).

In "Flatline", aliens from a 2-dimensional universe steal "dimensional energy" from the TARDIS, resulting in the TARDIS shrinking to a size where Clara can pick it up and fit it in her purse. This only affects the exterior shell of the TARDIS though, the interior is still the same size due to being Bigger on the Inside. This does result in the Doctor being trapped inside though (since the exterior is too small for him to fit through the exit). The exit is still large enough for the Doctor to fit his hand through the opening and pass objects to Clara though, which results in some amusing scenes where a hand comes out of her purse holding a hammer that couldn't have possibly fit in said purse.

Farscape "I Shrink, Therefore I Am". The crew are shrunk by bounty hunters to make them easier to transport and control. Sikozu immediately starts listing all the reasons why this is impossible (their brains should be too simple to function, and they shouldn't be able to breathe normal-sized air molecules) until Rygel tells her to just shut up and accept that the impossible has happened. The episode ends with a fight between Crichton and the Villain of the Week, with each trying to shrink the other and resize themselves. Needless to say, someone ends up getting squashed nastily.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "One Little Ship": A runabout is sent to study a Negative Space Wedgie whose shrinking effect is already known (the fact that the explorers will be shrunk is a matter of great amusement to those staying behind). Unfortunately the Defiant is captured by Jem'Hadar and the now miniscule explorers must help the crew take back the ship. One scene has Bashir and O'Brien having to exit the runabout to alter a circuit — because they can't breathe the full-sized air molecules outside, they beam a bubble of the runabout's air inside the circuit's casing. The episode ends with Odo and Quark pulling a rare practical joke on Bashir and O'Brien, by pretending they haven't "quite" returned to full size.

On Misfits of Science, seven-foot-tall Dr. Elvin Lincoln had been working on a treatment that would make him shorter; he overdid it a bit and wound up with the ability to make himself six inches tall at will.

"The Mighty Mites" segment of Owl TV revolved around a group of kids who shrink themselves at will to study insects and other small creatures.

The first half of the two-part Mork & Mindy episode "Mork In Wonderland" centers on Mork shrinking after taking a cold capsule (the explanation is that the capsule is supposed to shrink the nasal membranes in humans, but Orkans are entirely membrane). In fact, he shrank so small that he ended up inside a micro-universe that had an analog of Mindy in it.

In Lois & Clark, Clark got shrunk to 6 inches tall. Thankfully, he still has all of his powers.

In the Charmed episode Size Matters, the Charmed Ones get shrunk by a demon with a shrink wand.

Sesame Street had a two-part story in which Big Bird was shrunk to about the size of a Twiddlebug.

The 1950s series World of Giants had a secret agent who had been shrunk to 6 inches tall. In the first episode he must get past a cat then climb to a desk top and dial an immense phone.

The Avengers: Steed gets shrunk down to a few inches tall by a shrink ray in "Mission...Highly Improbable". He still manages to save the day.

On Misfits of Science, Dr. Elvin Lincoln's power is the ability to shrink himself. The clothes issue is Lampshaded, as he keeps a set of doll clothes with him to change into when he shrinks.

British children's show Grandpa in My Pocket revolves around a boy whose grandfather can turn three inches tall at will whenever he wears a magic cap that he owns.

In Arrow's third season finale, Ray is making some adjustments to his Atom suit, which causes an explosion, and he is presumed dead. In the fourth season, he is revealed to have been shrunk, and somehow survived for many months before being captured by the Big Bad. He is returned to his normal size after being rescued, and his suit now allows him to shrink at will.

In the fourth season of The Flash (2014), this happens to Cisco and Ralph after an encounter with a metahuman who can shrink things. Their powers still work, but are proportional to their sizes. They return to their normal sizes after getting affected by the metahuman's powers again.

Parodied on the Late Night with David Letterman sketch "The Incredible Shrinking Guy", with Chris Elliott in the title role. The sketch shows Chris encountering a mouse. He is unable to find an object to defend himself with until he grabs a nearby bottle and smashed it over the mouse's head. When Dave asks him about the bottle, Chris has a hard time explaining how he found an object small enough for him to handle.

Music

Daniel Amos have a song named "Incredible Shrinking Man", which uses the imagery as a metaphor for feelings of insignificance and powerlessness in modern society. The album with that song, Vox Humana, also has a short story in the liner notes, where the narrator suddenly finds himself shrinking until a small pebble becomes, from his perspective, an impassible mountain.

Balrasht from The Fallen Gods is a forest giant who's been shrunken down small enough to fit in Tuatha's hand. The party gets hit with this in episode 4 as well, and end up having to do battle with a group of slugs and a flail snail in order to return to regular size.

In The Adventure Zone: Balance, one of Lucas's elevators does this, allowing those who enter to view a diorama as if it were actual size.

Tabletop Games

One memorable scenario from the early days of Dungeon magazine involved the player characters being shrunk down to the size of gaming miniatures by a malfunctioning magical orb. Unusual in that, aside from the usual small animals posing a deadly threat, many previous groups of travelers had already fallen prey to this effect, forming themselves into Wacky Wayside Tribes that feud over the resources of a small garden.

In Crimestrikers, one of Gadgeteer Genius Esperanza Sixtos' inventions is the Shrinksphere, a kind of reverse Pokéball that absorbs people into a sphere, where they stay in what amounts to a luxury hotel room. It's used to capture villains and smuggle the heroes in or out of enemy territory. In the episode seed "Shrunk and Disorderly", a Phlebotinum Breakdown with the Shrinksphere causes several Crimestrikers to get stuck at 15cm/6" tall.

The 'Mini' spell and debuff in most Final Fantasy installments, which induces a status where all physical attacks are reduced to Scratch Damage and defense is lowered.

The move Minimize in the Pokémon games (which is banned in competitive play) has the user compress their bodies to make themselves smaller and increase their evasion, thereby making their opponents' moves less accurate. However, various kinds of attack that involve crushing the recipient onto the ground (historically only Stomp, but others such as Steamroller, Flying Press and Heavy Slam have been added in later generations) bypass this evasion check and deal double damage against the target if they used Minimize.

It also cuts their mass (because the Mario games already laugh in the face of physics). It does not change the strength of jumps. These two facts allow Mario to vault through the air and fall much more slowly.

The Mini Mushroom had first appeared in Super Mario Kart, where it could only be thrown by CPU opponents. It would temporarily make you slow and vulnerable.

In Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 4: The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood, Guybrush uses one of the buttons on De Singe's Auto-Trepanation Helmet and gets shrunk a bit smaller than the size of a lab vole for a bit before growing back to normal size.

Some of the later levels in Byteria Heroes: Crimson Gem of Order have a potion that shrinks you, so you can run through small passageways. You then have to reach another potion to reverse the effect before you can exit the level. You cannot attack in this state, either, which is why the final boss loves to cast a shink spell; it wears off by itself in this case.

Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time has the Shrinking Violet, which shrinks zombies in a 3x3 area. This causes them to receive double damage and deal half damage thanks to reduced size. Against the already-tiny Imps and zombie animals, it turns into a One-Hit Kill by shrinking them into oblivion.

One of the DLC dramas for The Idolmaster SP involves Yukiho inexplicably shrinking to 1/6 size.

In every Mario Kart game, the Lightning item causes this to the racers, resulting with them losing their items and reducing top speed. In some games, this also leaves other racers open to being flattened.

Mario Kart: Super Circuit also features Thunder Clouds as hazards on its Rainbow Road, which has the same effect on characters that drive underneath them.

In Fate/Grand Order, the heroes have to journey with Ishtar through the underworld at one point. Each time Ishtar passes through one of the gates, she shrinks. By the time they make it to Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, Ishtar is so small she is almost impossible to see. The creators have noted that in the original myth, Ishtar was stripped of an article of clothing at each gate until she was rendered naked, but the game would have never gotten away with depicting that, plus this way was funnier.

The Lightning Bolt item from the Mario Kart series (as detailed above) was also featured as an item in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and all subsequenttitles from there. When a fighter touches it, it may temporarily shrink all of the other fighters on the stage, drastically reducing their damage output and weight. However, it may also backfire by making only the fighter who touched it shrink instead, or by making all of the other fighters grow! Additionally, any fighter that picks up a Poison Mushroom (which, while similar-looking to the size-increasing Super Mushroom, is slightly darker in coloration and bears an angrier expression) will get temporarily cut down to size.

In the Supermarioglitchy4s Super Mario 64 Bloopers episode "Mini Italians", Mario, SMG4 and X eat a Poison Mushroom and shrink down in size. Mario figures out the trio can go swimming in toilets with this ability, however the other two want to go back to normal. And that's how they spent most of the episode trying to find a Mushroom.

Web Comics

In U.F.O., Queen Pamela's hostages are shrunk down to the size of small rodents and put in a gerbil cage.

El Goonish Shive has "women shrinking out of clothes" as a joke fetish in universe.

SCP-881 ("Little People"). SCP-881 is 9,891 humans, animals and plants shrunk down to tiny size by the side effects of the destruction of another SCP. They initially ranged from 2 millimeters to 15 centimeters high, but over time some were created that were even smaller. Being so small however, many of the men of the towns had been sneaking out and causing pregnancies with normal sized women by crawling inside them.

Deconstructed with the resizing device SCP-1056. Shrinking or resizing people with it usually results in their brains and internal organs undergoing re-arrangement or ceasing to work correctly. (In particular, if you're shrunk, your brain becomes smaller and thus you become dumber.)

Operation Mikroorganisation is a 13-episode German web series about a teenager who shrinks after drinking a potion he purchased through a television shopping channel.

Western Animation

The Alvin and the Chipmunks episode "Funny We Shrunk the Adults," is one where Dave and Miss Miller are shrunken by Simon's "matter compacting" ray. At the same time, the Chipmunks and some neighbor kids who they are trying to impress are wrecking the house with their rowdy playing and bringing in things like a circus, including the animals. In fact, it was the rowdy playing that made the shrink ray turn on and zap Dave in the first place.

Inverted in an earlier episode with Dave walking from a dream about him shrinking.

In Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Frylock invents a shrink ray to shrink down a huge microchip, which is eaten by Meatwad. Out of options on how to get the chip out of Meatwad, Frylock gets Shake to shrink him, but Shake abuses the ray for his own amusement.

Happens in Arthur several times. First, Buster is scaled down to make him appear tiny on the TV in Buster's imagination. Second, there is a Magic School Bus-esque sequence. And other times, characters imagined there are little in bad dream sequences.

The Avenger Penguins episode "Big City Little City" had Caractacus P. Doom use a shrink ray on the Avenger Penguins.

On the episode "An Inside Job", four of the Planeteers are shrunk by Dr. Blight. The episode becomes a "Fantastic Voyage" Plot when Kwame accidentally drinks them and they must fight parasites inside of him.

In "No Small Problem", Sly Sludge shrinks the Planeteers and leaves them in a dump.

Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers features this reversed in one episode by Professor Nimnul to make ordinary bugs huge to fake an alien invasion, and more-or-less used straight in a later episode when some mob goons steal his device to shrink and steal buildings. In both cases, the Rescue Rangers, remaining their normal size (apart from Zipper in the earlier episode), thwart the bad guys.

Finally both played straight and reversed in another episode, where Chinese big bad used shrinking ray to increase size (and luxury) of cars, and then import sell them. By the end of the episode, Rescue Rangers grow to the size of a human, and then back.

Danny Phantom episode "Micro Management" where Jack shrunk Danny, Skulker, and accidentally, Dash down to size. Had the added bonus of Danny slowly losing his powers because of it, risking his Secret Identity to the local Jerk Jock as the two tried to make their way up with a Hunter of Monsters in pursuit.

This happened in the Darkwing Duck episode "Getting Antsy", where a crook was using a shrink-ray to loot the city using ants. Darkwing ends up getting zapped and reduced to the size of an ant for most of the episode and gets shrunk a second time near the end, where he ends up coming up with an unusual way of saving the day.

Defenders of the Earth has two episodes in which some of the regulars are shrunk. In "Bits n' Chips", Rick's new micronizer provides the teenaged Defenders with a means of getting inside Dynak-X and defeating the electronic maggot which Ming has implanted in her. And, in "The Carnival of Doctor Kalihari", the four oldest Defenders are exposed to a shrinking potion and face a race against time to find the antidote before they shrink away to nothing.

In the Ed, Edd n Eddy music video ''The Incredible Shrinking Day'' (which isn't canon), Sarah makes a shrinking potion, spikes a pitcher of lemonade with it, and offers some to the Eds, who drank the concoction and shrunk so that Sarah can play with them. It wears off after they hid from Sarah.

In an episode of Eek! The Cat called "Honey, I Shrunk the Cat", both Eek and Sharky were accidentally shrunken down by Elmo the elk's shrinking machine. After a failed attempt to grow back to their normal sizes, Eek and Sharky put some astronaut suits on and go to a sick president's nostril and travel inside his head to get a raisin off his brain (despite growing a little bigger amount every single time). After Eek and Sharky remove the raisin, the president sneezes them out of his nose. They did grow back when they eventually fly out the window and crash into the ground.

There's also an episode where he shrinks down to have a chat with his (not making this up) evil, undead, pet gerbil, only to discover that it's Ax-Crazy and out for revenge.

There's also the episode where Timmy wishes he could have one last adventure with his Crimson Chin doll, upon which Cosmo and Wanda shrink him down to toy size. Much of this episode is very reminiscint of the movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

Spoofed in the Fanboy and Chum Chum episode "The Incredible Shrinking Fanboy", where Fanboy only thinks he's shrinking, after the flower where he marks his growth grows overnight. Yo uses this to her advantage, giving him a helmet with magnifying lenses to help with the illusion while she takes Chum-Chum to her room to play with.

The Fantastic Four (1967) took this to a whole new level in "The Micro World of Doctor Doom", shrinking the heroes until they wound up in a subatomic universe, then shrinking them some more, making them tiny within that context.

The Filmation's Ghostbusters episode "Little Big Bat" had Prime Evil trick Belfry into using an amulet to shrink Jake, Eddie, and Tracy.

Princess Gwendolyn being magically shrunk by the Evil Duke is the event that kickstarts the plot of Gawayn.

Gravity Falls: In "Little Dipper", Dipper finds a crystal that can make things shrink or grow when light shines through them, which he attaches to a flashlight. Dipper plans to use it so he's no longer shorter than Mabel, but Gideon Gleeful gets his hands on it and shrinks Dipper and Mabel. The miniaturized Mystery Twins have to stop Gideon from using the shrink ray on their Grunkle Stan and stealing the Mystery Shack.

In the Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi episode "Small Stuff", our duo is shrunk after going through the dryer.

In the Hoze Houndz episode "Hoze I Shrunk the Houndz" four of the protagonists overdose on their colleague's homemade power drink and shrink to the size of mosquitoes.

Inch High, Private Eye was a 1970s series about a very short detective.

The Incredible Hulk (1982) used this in the episode "The Incredible Shrinking Hulk", where Bruce Banner shrunk because of an experiment gone awry and spent the episode trying to get Betty Ross and Rick Jones to notice him and help him with his predicament until the shrinking wears off by the end of the episode.

Phineas and Ferb do this to themselves in "Hide and Seek" to make the game more enjoyable, but Baljeet gets trapped in front of the air conditioner, and Candace has the shrinking machine.

In The Powerpuff Girls episode "Nano of the North", the girls are shrunk down to fight the Nanobots.

In the Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders episode "Full Circle", after the villainess Lady Kale tries to harness the ultimate magic of the Crown Jewels, it becomes too much for her and the power ends up shrinking her in size before she fades out to dust.

This is the plot of the Ready Jet Go! episode "Jet Shrinks the Kids", where Jet shrinks himself, Sydney, Sean, and Sunspot to become Mindy's size. Things go awry, however, and they become the size of mice. Mindy spends the episode trying to reverse the shrink ray, while Jet, Sydney, Sean, and Sunspot try to evade Mitchell and Cody. This episode is also unusually quite scary for a show targeted towards kids.

The Real Ghostbusters episode "Short Stuff" had the Ghostbusters shrunk by one of the Ghostmaster's bounty hunters. They then try to evade the bounty hunter while Janine and Slimer look up a spell to reverse the change.

ReBoot did this several times. First for a "Fantastic Voyage" Plot, then twice more in games where everything but the main characters is scaled up to make them appear shrunk.

The Rupert episode "Rupert and the BIGsmall Machine" involved Rupert Bear, his friend Podgy Pig, and the Professor being shrunk by the titular BIGsmall machine.

In Sabrina: The Animated Series episode "Shrink to Fit" Sabrina and Chloe use a shrinking spell to fit into some tight jeans. Though they continue to shrink until they're practically microscopic. Magic Pants is averted at first, until they find some doll clothes, which continues to shrink with them for the rest of the episode.

The episode "The Incredible Shrinking Wizard", which combines this trope with a Green Aesop. Gargamel shrinks after drinking from a muck pond polluted with his potions, and negative emotions cause him to shrink even further. Only by doing good deeds can he grow back to his original size.

Another episode where Slouchy wishes to be the tallest Smurf also causes the other Smurfs to be shrunk to bug size.

In the TaleSpin episode "The Incredible Shrinking Molly", Molly runs afoul of a wacky Mad Scientist and his shrinking machine. The scientist eventually shrinks Baloo, Rebecca and the Sea Duck so they can save her.

In the Taz-Mania episode "The Amazing Shrinking Taz and Co.", one of the Platypus Brothers' inventions causes Taz, Bull Gator and Axl to shrink down to ant size.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) has the appropriately titled "The Incredible Shrinking Turtles," where Shredder uses an alien crystal to shrink the foursome down to the point where things like a tiny fish are now dangerous hazards to the pint-size teens. A second episode also involves shrinking, though only Michelangelo gets shrunk this time around.

The VBirds are shrunk to fit into the Dance Machine as part of their exile to Earth.

One episode of The Venture Bros. cartoon has a shrink-ray gun Dr. Venture designed being sold at his yard sale. A later episode has Venture and Dr. Orpheus squaring off and betting over whether science or magic was better, deciding on shrinking as a challenge. Orpheus's incantations only shrink furniture, and Venture's shrink-ray gun is defective...testing it on Billy Quizboy has disturbing results.

The shrink-ray has reappeared a couple of times. In "Handsome Ransom", a shrunken Sgt. Hatred stows away in a briefcase of money (complete with Benjamin Franklin camouflage) to foil a ransom scheme. The raygun fails to regrow him at the critical moment. In "The Diving Bell Vs. the Butter-Glider" the ray is used for a straight-up "Fantastic Voyage" Plot.

Then there is the case of Paul Entmann, a parody of Marvel's Ant-Man. He was accidentally shrunk to a few inches, ironically in an attempt to cure his also-accidental "super-gigantism" (he was also known as Humongoloid). Then he was accidentally forgotten and locked away for thirty years in an evacuated fallout shelter, left to fend off ants with a sewing needle. For some reason, he remains tiny until accidentally killed by a rocking chair a few years after being freed, even though Dr. Venture's shrink ray has a "grow" setting that has been known to actually work.

Wild Wild West had an episode where Jim shrank and had to face a cat.

The fairies in Winx Club who have earned their Enchantix form can shrink into tiny versions of themselves. Bloom initially doesn't have this power since her Enchantix is incomplete, but she gains it after The Secret of the Lost Kingdom.

Practically every episode of Wild Kratts features the brothers shrinking themselves so they can investigate the lives and environments of small animals. While it's usually just a convenience, on several occasions the Miniaturizer gets broken, lost or stolen while they're small, leaving them stuck in mini-form.

Xiaolin Showdown did both this and its opposite: Lead character Omi uses the Changing Chopsticks to make himself huge in order to defeat the giant Cyclops and loses. When he tries to go back to his normal size, Omi shrinks to mini size for the remainder of the episode.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy